An image forming apparatus is an apparatus that is used to form an image on a printing medium according to input image signals. Examples of image forming apparatuses include printers, copiers, facsimiles, and devices that combine the functions of one or more of such apparatuses.
An image forming apparatus typically includes a body that defines the external appearance of the apparatus, a printing media storage unit in which one or more sheets of printing media (e.g., sheets of printing paper) can be stored, a developing unit that forms a toner image on a printing medium, a pickup unit that picks up a printing medium from the printing media storage unit, and that feeds the picked-up printing medium to the developing unit, a fixing unit that fixes the toner image to the printing medium, and a discharge unit that discharges the printing medium, on which an image has been formed, out of the body of the image processing apparatus.
In an image forming apparatus having the above-described configuration, an electrostatic latent image is formed on a surface of a photoconductor of the developing unit by irradiating light on the surface of the photoconductor that had been charged with a predetermined electric potential. After being formed on the photoconductor, the electrostatic latent image is developed with toner to form a visible toner image. The toner image on the photoconductor is transferred to a printing medium fed from the printing media storage unit by the pickup unit. The toner image is fixed to the printing medium while passing the printing medium through the fixing unit such that the image is completely formed on the printing medium. The printing medium having the formed image is discharged out of the body of the image forming apparatus via the discharge unit.
When the printing medium is picked up from the printing media storage unit by the pickup unit to be delivered to the developing unit as described above, the picked-up printing medium can accumulate static charge by the friction that occurs between the picked-up printing medium and printing medium remaining in the printing media storage unit. The static charge can have negative effects on the operation of various elements of the image forming apparatus. Therefore, an image forming apparatus having a configuration that can reduce the amount of static charge is desirable.